Yeah my first sex scene was in the Arabian nights on the family book shelve when I was too young to really understand what was going on.

I recall being rather mystified by V. C. Andrews' My Sweet Audrina at 12. The girl I rode the bus with was reading it.

When I encountered sex in literature I wasn't shocked, but it did seem like a whole lot of work and weirdness.

Oh, I think I read dirty books before I came across the sex in the book I can't remember, but they were Dirty Books, not people Doing It in a respectable book I got at the library!

I definitely remember knowing what people did, and not being able to figure out why it seemed like a good idea. Starting with french kissing.

The first books I read that had anything to do with sex were texts in the "What to expect when you're expecting" vein. But there were no penises in them. I had a vague notion of fertilisation through implantation, gestation and development through about age 10.

The thing with the penises and the lust and the kissing and the mouths in strange places? Didn't seem so related.

Weird discovery of the day: if I go to la_perkins.livejournal.com, I go to my LJ, as expected, and can see my locked posts and so on, but if I accidentally type in la-perkins.livejournal.com, it takes me to a page of all of my unlocked posts.

So, a friend of mine just won a round the owrld trip worth 20,000 pounds. We were celebrating. I had beer and some Greek thing. But, holiday! Holy crap!

That's so great, Jars!

(Was the Greek thing Ouzo?)

I think the first books I ever read that had sex in them were the Kent Family Chronicles by John Jakes (The Bastard, The Rebels, The Seekers, The Furies, The Warriors, The Lawless). I don't think I read all of each book, either.

flea, I think I read that Audrina book too early. What the hell was the deal anyhow? The girl had a different birthday/age, and I really can't remember anything else about it.

First book I read with sex in it was Sacajawea by Anne Waldo Something. It was huge; I was 7, and picked it up and told my dad I was going to read it. He was all "Sure, babe, go ahead" but was amazed when I started plowing through it. He questioned me on some things, and was astounded I was really reading it, and getting much of it.

He explained there were some grown-up things in there, and when I should have questions, I should ask. I did. I had to ask him what rape was. He did a good job of explaining it, and sex to a 7 year old.

JZ, I've never read Northanger Abbey but I was thinking about a Gothic instead of "House of Mirth. Should I pick up a copy and give it a go?

I was thinking maybe Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibilty. I know other teachers have mentioned some kids find the whole mannered restraint a hard idea to grasp, but I see a lot of parallels in Latino culture -- the sense of familial duty and ritualized social customs, especially.

I'm also playing with the idea of using Reading Lolita in Tehran as a kind of joining book. It's about using works of literture to translate a culture -- we could read excerpts before and during reading some of the novels, and talk about current events, how culture informs a reader, and also look at how girls (my class, I imagine, will be heavily female) from a different culture interpret the same works of lit.

Kristin, if you and I happen to teach any of the same novels in any of our classes, I'd love to arrange for a email or letter exchange with your students to do something of the same. I know your kids are also American teens, but you teach at a upper middle class, mostly Jewish school, right? That might be interesting.

Yeah my Arabian nights was at 7. Not really surprising. There is a lot in that to appeal to a kid, which is why so many childrens versions of it have been written and filmed. But I did need explaination about why the girl taking her top off "made his pickle to rise". Cause we always had jars of kosher dills in the house, and I'd never seen one move.

Simplified English is wronger than a wrong thing that is wrong: [link]